Sinking funds in South Australia

South Australia runs two regimes side by side. Strata schemes answer to the Strata Titles Act 1988; community title schemes answer to the Community Titles Act 1996. On money, the two part ways.

A community corporation must keep two funds under section 116: an administrative fund for routine outgoings, and a sinking fund for non-recurrent spending — the works that arrive less often than once a year. A strata corporation faces no such rule. Section 27 lets it raise reserve funds for future expenditure of a capital nature; nothing makes it do so.

Both kinds of corporation must table an expenditure statement at each annual general meeting — section 113 for community corporations, section 33A for strata — setting out expected recurrent and non-recurrent costs and the contributions to be levied. Larger schemes also fold in a forward budget of proposed non-recurrent spending: three years ahead for seven to twenty lots or units, five years ahead beyond twenty — and only where the buildings and improvements are insured for more than $200,000. Six lots or fewer, or insurance at or under that figure, and the requirement never applies.

Notice what those sections never ask. There is no minimum balance, no prescribed method for setting contributions, and no requirement that anyone qualified check the sums against the building. An audit, where one is required, confirms the money was handled properly — not that there will be enough of it. A South Australian corporation can comply in full and still be broke the day the roof gives out.

So the safety net is the committee itself. Where a building has been guessing for fifteen years, the correction arrives as a special levy — five figures a lot, due in a quarter nobody planned for. The statute did not fail; it never promised protection in the first place. A real forecast is cover the law leaves you to arrange on your own.

Two numbers define the gap. Five years is the longest look-ahead either Act ever demands, and only from the largest schemes. Set that against what the fund exists to pay for: membranes and lifts on twenty-to-thirty-year cycles, repaints on ten, windows and balustrades on longer runs again. A fully compliant forward budget can end years before the first major bill lands.

Six units is the other number. At or below it, no forward budget is ever required — yet small schemes feel capital works hardest, because a $60,000 job splits six ways, not sixty. The corporations the statute asks least of are the ones a shortfall hurts most. That inversion is the strongest argument in the state for forecasting anyway.

Plinth keeps a register of the building's elements — replacement cost, cycle, condition — and runs it forward twenty years with cost escalation. It names the year the sinking fund runs short and the contribution that prevents it. Come the AGM, the section 113 or section 33A statement is drawn from a model of the building as it is now, not the figures from three AGMs ago with a percentage added. Works are tracked from quote to awarded cost to approved variation, so committed spend flows straight back into the forecast, and compliance documents sit against the assets they cover with expiry dates watched.

To be clear about what Plinth is not: it is software, not a statutory report, and not engineering, quantity surveying, legal or financial advice. South Australia does not prescribe who prepares a forward budget — but where your corporation engages a quantity surveyor or engineer, their report belongs in the plan, and Plinth carries that work forward so the numbers still hold when the committee votes.

Plinth costs A$750 a year GST inclusive for the first building and A$350 a year for each additional building on the account. Every feature comes at every price, with no per-seat charges. To see the shape of your position before signing anything, the free calculator at /tools/sinking-fund-calculator takes six inputs and no sign-up, the worked demo at /demo walks a full building, and the guides at /learn cover the questions committees actually ask.